Eli Damaskinos
Eli Damaskinos was a pureblood vampire and the Overlord of the Vampire Nation. It is believed that he is several centuries old, perhaps even millennia. Damaskinos sired two offspring, both pureblood vampires as well; his daughter Nyssa and his son Nomak. Biography ''Blade II Damaskinos sought to find a way to genetically alter the vampire's evolutionary line, removing all of the species' inherent weaknesses, particularly, their vulnerability to sunlight. In essence, he wanted to duplicate the random qualifiers that created the Daywalker known as Blade. To this end, Damaskinos secretly created a virus designed to improve upon a vampire's natural strengths. He used his own son Nomak as a guinea pig, but did not achieve the goal he sought for. Instead, he inadvertently created an offshoot vampire race that came to be known as Reapers. Nomak was patient zero and a carrier of the Reaper Strain. Nomak went rogue and began transmitting the virus to as many vampires as he could find. Within short order, hundreds of vampires were being transformed into Reapers. The most mitigating aspect that distinguished Reapers from other vampires is that they derived nourishment through drinking the blood of other vampires, as well as humans. This fundamental trait threatened to bring the natural vampire race to the verge of extinction. Damaskinos realized that he had little alternative but to turn to the Vampire Nation's worst enemy for assistance - Blade, the Vampire Hunter. He forged a temporary truce with Blade and convinced him that the Reaper threat was a concern for both parties. His selling point was that once the Reapers eradicated all vampires, they would then begin hunting down Blade's "precious humans". Blade reluctantly agreed to the truce, mostly because in doing so, he would become privy to the Vampire Nation's most closely guarded secrets. To this end, Damaskinos placed Blade in charge of a vampire combat troupe known as the Bloodpack. Few people knew the true origins of the Reaper Strain, and Damaskinos kept it a closely guarded secret. To the rest of vampire society, Reapers were just the end result of natural selection gone mad. The secrecy behind Damaskinos' plans began to unravel when Nomak had a chance encounter with Blade's armorer Abraham Whistler. Nomak gave Whistler a ring and told him the truth about Damaskinos. When Whistler returned to the vampires' headquarters with Blade, he revealed what Nomak had told him and everyone learned the truth about the Reaper Strain. Nomak soon returned to the lair of his birth to confront his father. He wanted revenge against him for being transformed into a hideous monster. Damaskinos begged his son's forgiveness, and tried to appease him with promises of global domination. Nomak heard the trembling in his father's voice, and knew that this was just the last act of a desperate man. Though he could no longer allow his father to live, Nomak could not bring himself to turn him into a Reaper. Instead, he embraced his father, and tore out a large portion of his throat with his fangs. Damaskinos fell to the floor and bled to death. His body transformed into a petrified alabaster shell. Character traits Eli Damaskinos is an old vampire, ancient enough to have his skin pale and thin as paper, with most of his natural powers lost for aging. Phisically, he resembles Count Orlock from Murnau's classic horror film "Nosferatu". He seems to be too old even for a proper feeding, since he's seen eating something that resembles a blood jelly instead of drinking blood like other vampires. Despite this, he's strong enough to threat his daughter Nyssa by grabbing her throat, suggesting that he's still a powerful vampire. Damaskinos is one of the most influent vampires, after the fall of the House of Erebus by the hands of Deacon Frost. He desposes of a large amount of money, since he can financiate a scientific research on large scale to create the Reapers and lives in an enormous palace built on an island of his property. He mostly acts like a mastermind, preferring to elaborate plans from the shadows than to act in first person, and so he makes use of spies and undercover agents, just like Scud in Blade's allies and Reinhardt in the Bloodpack. He's somewhat charming and charismatic, but he can be cruel when disappointed. Relationships *Nyssa - Daughter. *Jared Nomak - Creation, genetically built for the purpose of starting a new breed of vampires, resistant to sunlight. *Karl Kounen - Lawyer. Appearances/Actors *Canon (1 film) **Blade II'' (First appearance) - Thomas Kretschmann Behind the scenes * Damaskinos originally had long white hair. But was removed in the finished film because, according to Guillermo del Toro, the hair made him look like Michael Bolton. Category:Blade (1998) characters Category:Earth-26320 Vampires Category:Created characters Category:Earth-26320 Deceased Category:Characters with Super Speed Category:Fathers